Forum:Wikia Spotlight and Article Fixing
Discussion Closed — Spotlight Achieved 04/24/09 Look at this before we start (Archived from User:Topher208/October 2008#Dan Povenmire Correspondence Suggestion, Templates, etc.): (I have seen "Wikia Spotlights" everywhere on every wiki. How do we get one? Or is there some rule or something? Because that would be a great -User:SuperFlash101)...Wikia Spotlights are for wikis that meet the content outlined here. They must have 100 solid content pages and stubs don't count. We have just recently crossed the threshold for having 100 non-stub articles. I have been making sure that every new user, including IP users get welcomed so there are no red links to talk pages. We also have 8 that need categories. The rest of the criteria, we have in the bag. (Hey, wait, I just looked on the "Life on Mars" wiki, and it only has 41 articles, but ''it still has a Wiki Spotlight. How'd that happen? --The Flash)...Not sure why "Life on Mars" wiki is in the spotlight. You're supposed to have 100 articles. We've got lots of articles that aren't marked as stubs that should be marked as stubs. I think we could use just a little more work, but I have come up with a wiki spotlight ad for us nonetheless. I can tweak it if we want to, also and we should vote on whether we want to use it. That should be done in a forum topic, not here, though. We should also discuss whether or not we want to be in the spotlight. This could lead to more vandalism. Would we be ready to handle that? Also, most of our rules are not written down yet. Maybe we should look into coming up with things like a manual of style and more help articles like "How to write the perfect article"? Since it was your proposal, I'll let you start a discussion in the forum about it. You can use my spotlight ad to show if you'd like.'' ---- Some Wikia Spotlight Ad possibilities (click on them to see full size ad): File:Wikia spotlight.jpg|No Doofenshmirtz File:Wikia spotlight Doof 1.jpg|Doofenshmirtz with red File:Wikia spotlight Doof 2.jpg|Doofenshmirtz on other side Now, let's get started. Below, begin posting your thoughts so we can begin and get this going. Thanks you. The Discussion Topher's Perspective I guess I'll kick this off. We are to the point now where we could start advertising as a Wikia Spotlight wiki. We have enough articles, we have our own logo and favicon, and we always make sure to welcome new users to the wiki (doesn't have to be me who does this either, you can do it too). Now I'm going to play devil's advocate here and tell you why we shouldn't go wiki spotlight. * We have no written down rules. Things like naming conventions, and rules about how to become an administrator should be in place before advertising to a broad audience. We also need rules about conflict resolution. Policies need to go into place, and we need the whole community to focus on adopting them. * We lack help articles. Articles like " " and a Manual of Style would be a nice addition to our wiki to help out the influx of new users. We need to make sure that we're not fighting one user after another without pages to point to that have guidance for them. These would have been great when we were trying to combat the Wall of Fame and such that Happyface414 was trying to employ. * Advertising leads to vandalism. With only one sysop at the moment, we are not equipped to handle a major vandalism attack. If someone goes through and starts vandalizing pages while I'm away from my computer, they could wipe out the whole wiki and I would have to revert all those pages. Let's start putting these things together and we can go Spotlight. Here is my to-do list before we go spotlight: # Categorize all articles and files. Jukilum went through and put a lot, if not all, our images we had at the time into Category:Images about a week ago. This is an ongoing process and everyone can help. # Welcome new users as they show up on the Recent Changes page. Anyone can welcome people to the wiki. You don't have to be an admin. # Create Phineas and Ferb Wiki:Naming convention policy. Things like when there's two articles with the same name, which one takes precedent? Do episodes outrank songs? Do songs outrank characters? # Create Phineas and Ferb Wiki:Manual of Style. What point of view are our articles written in? How do you cite your sources? Do you specify a thumbnail size for an image? Check out other wikia wikis for help on how to write the manual of style. # Create Phineas and Ferb Wiki:Administrators. How does one become an administrator of the wiki? Does someone need to have a certain number of edits? Is all they have to do is ask? # Create . Give advice on how it should look and sound. It should follow things laid out in the Manual of Style, so most of this work will be done after the MoS is complete. # Create Phineas and Ferb Wiki:Featured articles. Create a policy on how an article becomes a Featured Article. These should be articles that are extremely well-written and thorough. It should also allow for how to be removed from the list of featured articles. Eventually the Article of the Month on the main page should come from this list. # Select at least one more administrator. Use the new administrator policy to select one or two more sysops for the wiki. We are doing really well at growing the information portion of the wiki, now we need to grow the community side of it as well. We need to get more interactive and collaborative, instead of working only on our individual projects. When we get the above issues taken care of, then I believe we're ready for the bright lights of the Wikia Spotlight. —Topher 08:27, 22 October 2008 (UTC) Flash's Perspective I agree with Topher completely. We do need to make those things. I also believe that we should get at least 1 more sysop before we get the Wikia Spotlight. That way, we can make sure we can better stop vandalism, which we have been dealing with lately. My vote for the Wikia Spotlight would be 1, because the others are kind of cramped. So, we should begin creating the help pages. Kind of off topic, but we need to vote for the images of Phineas and Ferb. Please check it out. Sorry, I just needed to say that. Anyways, yeah, so that's my perspective. --SuperFlash101 15:28, 26 October 2008 (UTC) Rules for the Spotlight You guys haven't been trying to get on the spotlight for a long time have you? here are the rules for spotlight. ---- *The wiki should have a Welcome template for logged-in users and anonymous-IPs. Every new user should get a welcome on their talk page. Spotlights bring in new contributors, and it's very important that the community welcomes these new users, and helps them to get started. There shouldn't be any red Talk links on Recent changes. This is essential for any wiki that gets spotlighted. *The wiki should use the Monaco skin as the default. *The wiki should have at least 100 content pages, not counting stubs. *The wiki should have a logo. *The main page of the wiki should have at least one picture, and clear links to the most important content. *The wiki should have a clear category structure to help readers navigate around the site. Every content page should be in a category. Hope this helps!-- Happyface 04:04, 17 November 2008 (UTC) :This forum is to discuss whether we're really ready to be chosen for Spotlight. We are aware of the rules, but not sure if we're truly ready to get a big influx of users and possible vandals. We haven't even petitioned for Spotlight status yet because we really work on community consensus around here and the community hasn't made a decision on this yet. —Topher 09:49, 19 November 2008 (UTC) Decision Needed Sorry, forgot to update this. We're already about to get one. —'Excelsior,' The Flash - ([[User talk:SuperFlash101|Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me bay-bay!]]) 15:26, 13 April 2009 (UTC) Look, it's time; we need this spotlight. The site is unnaturally quiet and empty, and if you're worried about vandalism, grant one or tow more people sysop powers. I will finish creating the necessary pages, and try to improve pages. Plus, the site will look even better once Toph designs a new backdrop, and I have some ideas for that and the sidebar, too. Let's finally put this to a vote: --SuperFlash101 17:15, 19 January 2009 (UTC) All For the Spotlight #SuperFlash 17:10, 19 January 2009 (UTC) #Ardi 10:12, 13 April 2009 (UTC) All Against the Spotlight Wikia